Getting caught is no problem for Brazil's gangsters

BANGU 1 prison in Rio de Janeiro is supposed to be one of Brazil's most secure. That did not stop its most notorious inmate, Luiz Fernando da Costa (alias “Fernandinho Beira-Mar”), the city's most powerful drug dealer, from obtaining guns and a full set of keys last week, apparently by bribing warders. Mr da Costa and members of his “Red Command” gang then passed through six security gates to the other end of the prison, where they murdered the leader of a rival gang and three henchmen.

The audacity of Brazil's criminal gangs, and the impunity they enjoy even behind bars, is chilling. In July, inmates at a Sao Paulo prison were found to be receiving deliveries of cannabis and pizzas. At another, in January, two prisoners arranged for a hijacked helicopter to collect them from the prison yard.

Prisons and most policing have long been in the hands of state governments. Under a grand anti-crime plan launched by President Fernando Henrique Cardoso in 2000, top-security federal jails were to be built for people like Mr da Costa. But only one has been built, in Amazonia. Disappointingly, public security is not a big issue in next month's presidential election. The main candidates all promise more federal police and tougher sentences. But they seem reluctant to push reforms to modernise the inefficient courts, or to require the states to merge their two rival police forces.

However, insecurity is stirring up races for state governorships. In Sao Paulo, Paulo Maluf, a conservative populist, promises harsher prison regimes and “violent” police patrols to repress crime. This week, Geraldo Alckmin, who is seeking re-election as Sao Paulo's governor, fulfilled a pledge to close Carandiru, a squalid and escape-prone jail. But that has meant crowding at other prisons. Mr Alckmin is building new ones; even so, prison numbers are rising faster than new cells. Mr Alckmin also boasts that his police gunned down 12 members of a prison gang which dominates organised crime in Sao Paulo.

Will that be Mr da Costa's fate? He was arrested last year in Colombia, for trading guns for cocaine with the FARC guerrillas. The justice ministry now proposes putting him in a military jail. No thanks, says the defence ministry. Nobody, it seems, will cage this beast.